André Zachery || The Playground NYC
Company:
THE PLAYGROUND NYC
André Zachery
Neighborhood Outdoor Meetups
Tuesday, 08/31 || 4:00-5:00PM
Brooklyn, NY
Register at Gibney and receive additional details
Cost: $6
Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway, NYC
Entrance 53A Chambers Street
The Playground NYC allows dancers to experience various choreographic styles and ideas, engage with a new community of dancers, and gather resourceful information and inspiration from the array of choreographers involved. In turn, established choreographers are paid for their creative investigations, are given free space to explore new movement with professional dancers, and are provided with the opportunity to establish relationships with new dancers and fellow choreographers.
Class Description:
Physical Propulsion is a training method of engaging the body through space using floor, standing and aerial techniques rooted in sacral-cranial alignment and awareness. The training method is built to functionally and tactically use physicality as an artistic conduit while testing the limits of movement across dimensions, especially across the usually forgotten transverse plane - the "z-axis". The aim is to achieve greater dynamic range across many levels while maintaining maximum efficiency in the body. Movement is generated and activated through the pulsating spine like a coiling bedspring. The class works from the ground-up to align the body to connect phrases with energy that coils and recoils akin to the spring. Movement variations are based on modalities from Flying Low technique - codified by David Zambrano, Laban, Límon and Capoeira. The growth and development of the Physical Propulsion is facilitated dually by personal inquiry as well as the exchange and input of movement practitioners from around the globe. The goal of each class is to gain more comfort and courage using the body into and out of the floor with dynamic range of motion, a sense of togetherness with class takers and musicality throughout the space.
Bio:
André M. Zachery is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist and the artistic director of Renegade Performance Group. His practice, research and community engagement artistically focuses on merging choreography, technology and contemporary Black cultural practices through multimedia work. André is a 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts Gregory Millard Fellow in Choreography and 2019 Jerome Hill Foundation Fellow in Choreography.
RPG has earned mentions and favorable reviews from publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Culturebot, Infinite Blogspot, Futuristically Ancient, Hyperallergic, the Brooklyn Rail, the Daily News and AFROPUNK. As a technologist André has collaborated with various artists through RPG, the design team of 3LD Art & Technology Center and The Clever Agency on design installations, immersive media productions, film productions, film editing, projection mapping and performance collaborations with artists such as Daniel Bernard Roumain, Cynthia Hopkins, Davalois Fearon, Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE, Arin Maya, Rags & Ribbons, Kendra Foster, Manhattan School of Music, Burwell & Sasser and Spike Lee.
As a scholar he has been a member of panels, led group talks, facilitated discussions and presented research on a myriad of topics including Afrofuturism, African Diaspora practices and philosophies, Black cultural aesthetics, technology in art and performance and on expanding the boundaries of art making within the community. He has been a panelist and presented his research at institutions such as Duke University, Brooklyn College, University of Virginia and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. André has taught at Brooklyn College and been a guest faculty member at the dance programs of Florida State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, The Ohio State University, University of California Los Angeles and University of California Riverside.
@renegadepg
@amzrpg
